Context Clues Influence on Students’ Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension Scores

Inferencing is the ability to draw conclusions beyond the text to comprehend it on a deeper and more connective level. This sophisticated strategy enables middle school students to not only understand a text better, but it is an essential higher order skill that helps to develop the deepest levels of comprehension. Research demonstrates that struggling readers benefit more from direct instruction involving inferencing strategies than those who are more proficient in reading. This study adds to research literature on teaching inferencing strategies will assist students in creating connections that focus on integrating information from a text. Given the importance of inference generation to reading comprehension, this study investigated the influences of inference instruction on the comprehension skills of struggling middle school readers. Overall, the results from this quasi-experimental study indicate that direct instruction of inferencing show significant gains to student reading comprehension